Why is "Business Intelligence" still so difficult?

Updated July 27, 2024 · Originally published October 14, 2009

Every week, I receive calls from mid-sized companies who are having significant difficulties analyzing their business results.  In a slower economy, being able to react quickly is literally "mission-critical".  What are the top 3 reasons why they tell me this is so difficult?

1) They are using Quickbooks, so can't get financial reporting by business unit, product line, or department.

2) All analysis is done in disconnected Excel spreadsheets, which are consistently out-of-date and require significant manipulation and reconciliation.

3) Managers have to wait for accounting or IT to get any results.  They have no capability of easily analyzing their own data,  or getting real-time information.  There is no reliable way of getting  true "business intelligence".

Fortunately, Microsoft has done an incredible job of tackling all of these issues from the end-user perspective using common tools like Excel, Outlook, and Sharepoint integrated directly with real-time data from the SQL database.   Even though the overall economy has been tough this year, our business has been stronger than ever because there is such as a serious need and easily justifiable ROI for these simple, yet very powerful tools.

by Michele Juliana, RSM McGladrey, New York Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner